1. HELPING CHEMISTS FIND JOBS IN A TOUGH MARKET. 2. TOWARDS A QUANTITATIVE UNDERSTANDING OF THE QUALITY OF THE CHEMISTRY JOB MARKET.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Fixed that for ya, dude.

Valued commenter bbooooooya sends along an excerpt from a press release of San Diego biotech Halozyme where they announce the layoff of 30 employees, which is approximately 25% of their workforce. I clarified the press release; I hope you enjoy. (Best wishes to the laid-off employees; hope your severance package is nice.)

7 comments:

With your permission, I'm going to print this out and put this on the announcement board outside the lab. We have similar stuff there already (along with the usual 'room for rent' 'tattoo parlor-10% off' 'interesting lecture next week' stuff), so it will fit the theme.

"You're so great at developing products that we're...firing you. But don't worry, your management will still be there to wave bye-bye."

1) I can see the point of entrepreneurship for chemists, but things like this make it look like playing Russian roulette with a semi-auto. Either it works out like this or, in the best case, like it worked out for Czarnik. Though I guess his employment lawyers got him something at least.

2) If we're so damn good, why aren't we making any money after ten years?

"2) If we're so damn good, why aren't we making any money after ten years? "

What are you talking about? HALO just pulled in $55 million from yet another secondary, these guys make millions. Previous shareholders get screwed (along with employees), but the name of the game is keeping executives employed with $500k+ salaries. These guys are doing that very well!

If you want lifelong security, get a tenure position. I mean, there are very very few industries that give you security beyond a few years. Why is chemistry so special? Do I have ethical issues to the point where my ears bleed? Of course I do. Are they shooting themselves in the foot for long term viability, well yes.

In the ideal sense and (how it always seems to work in the libertarian wet dream) the unemployed researchers just march down the street to the next company that is building a future or even start their own business. (If the proprietary rights lawyers don't have anything to say about it.)